Officials at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. are looking into how a Fox News reporter acquired a confidential terrorist threat assessment on Chicago over a public file-sharing network.
Larry Yellen, an investigative reporter with WFLD Fox News in Chicago, on Tuesday reported that he recently used a peer-to-peer (P2P) program called LimeWire to obtain the Booz Allen document. The firm authored the document in 2002.
George Farrar, a spokesman for Booz Allen, today confirmed the incident and said the document was commissioned by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) five years ago. It was one of 35 threat assessments of the nation's bus and rail systems that Booz Allen was commissioned to do by the agency.
"Essentially, yes, those were Booz Allen documents that were available on the Internet via a peer-to-peer file-sharing system," Farrar said. "What we don't know is from what system those documents made their way to the Internet."
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